The muchly honored biographer and novelist of all things English and particularly Londonish, Peter Ackroyd here gives us a companion of sorts to his modernization of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with a vital new translation of Thomas Malory's moving and inventive work of Arthurian legend, Le Morte d'Arthur. In The Death of King Arthur, the golden age of Camelot, the perilous search for the Holy Grail, the love of Guinevere and Lancelot, and the treachery of Arthur's son Mordred are rendered into sparkling contemporary prose, while Ackroyd also takes the opportunity to gently remove a few repetitions and inconsistencies from Malory.

"In this ingenious decanting of an old wine into a new bottle, he has taken a glorious part of our cultural heritage and made it more accessible to the readers of the 21st century."—Sunday Telegraph (London)